Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti SONIC Edition Review - PAGE 1

NVIDIA released their latest GeForce GTX 560 Ti just a week ago, and since that time the new card has already managed to build quite a reputation for itself. This is in part due to the card's excellent performance relative to its price segment and an improved power consumption rating. The card's strongest aspect though is its excessively high overclocking capabilities. During our testing of the reference model, we were able to push the stock 822MHz base clock up by 27%, which gave it a final rating of 1040MHz. At that frequency the GTX 560 Ti was able to compete aggressively with the high-end GTX 570, which added even further to the already excellent price-to-performance ratio.

The GTX 560 Ti is the older brother of the GTX 460, as both are based off the same core architecture and use similar internal specifications. The GF114 GPU used in the GTX 560 Ti is in fact an optimized version of the GF104 GPU. However, NVIDIA has improved the performance and efficiency of the GF114 GPU by making transistor-level changes, increasing the reference clock speeds and enabling all available 384 CUDA cores. These changes account for up to a 33% total performance increase and a 21% better performance-per-watt increase in comparison to the GTX 460.

The GTX 560 Ti that we are looking at today comes from Palit, and is part of their Sonic series. As part of the Sonic line, the graphics processing and CUDA clocks speeds have been increased to 900MHz and 1800MHz respectively. This is a boost of nearly 11% over the reference design. The memory on the model is also overclocked, as the card comes with 1GB of GDDR5 memory rated at 1050MHz (4200MHz effective). In addition to the increased frequencies the Palit GTX 560 Ti Sonic is built on a custom PCB that reduces the size of the graphics card down to just 7.5 inches, and includes a updated dual fan heatsink.

Palit will be releasing three versions of the NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti. We are looking at their overclocked Sonic version in this review, but they will also ship a model that utilizes the reference clock speeds and one that includes 2GB GDDR5 frame buffer.

Comments

hi i think its a nice review to show a Palit card as i can remember they were at the beginning of the 460 GTX release the fastest oc card for a few weeks and this looks gr8 but now there is faster oc 560 GTX Ti out there. Love to see reference 560 Ti is more efecient than 5870 from the charts and compete prety nicely with it at lower resolutions like im using 1920 x 1080 so ill get this card instead and that Asus Aries card is still very fast but 6970 or even 6950 in crossfire beats it down. Can't wait for next reviewed card

The performance seems alright, but it's the other stuff (the fact that its smaller and has two fans plus some OC) that's included and the MRSP doesn't actually reflect the bonus features?

The lack of being able to tri-SLI it isn't that big of a loss, I think. It's a good card, but I'd think the sort of people that would go beyond dual SLI are the sort that would be willing to pump a lot of extra money into their rig (so getting higher end cards).

Also leochan, will you or any other members of the team start adding 3D-Vision (if not ATI-3D as well) to performance tests? 3D gaming is niche, sure, but it'd be nice to see how certain cards cope with 3D rendering.

The MSRP is 249.99, which is the same as the reference models so there is not additional cost added for this card even though it has better stock performance.

As for the 3D testing we could do that in future reviews as we are in the processes of acquiring new games for our benchmarks. We are adding more DX11 titles. The issue I have with the 3D testing though is that we are only setup to test NVIDIA 3D and not AMD. That would make for sort of looped sided testing. Unless you know someone with a very cheap 120Hz DisplayPort monitor. LOL

The performance seems alright, but it's the other stuff (the fact that its smaller and has two fans plus some OC) that's included and the MRSP doesn't actually reflect the bonus features?

The lack of being able to tri-SLI it isn't that big of a loss, I think. It's a good card, but I'd think the sort of people that would go beyond dual SLI are the sort that would be willing to pump a lot of extra money into their rig (so getting higher end cards).

Also leochan, will you or any other members of the team start adding 3D-Vision (if not ATI-3D as well) to performance tests? 3D gaming is niche, sure, but it'd be nice to see how certain cards cope with 3D rendering.